I know I should have entered this in the pleonasm contest, but I am new here. My least favorite pleonasm is do do, as in; .....and when they do do that.........When is it ever necessary to use two do's, except for when speaking to or about pets? And then, why not just call it what it is?

I know I should have entered this in the pleonasm contest, but I am new here. My least favorite pleonasm is do do, as in; .....and when they do do that.........When is it ever necessary to use two do's, except for when speaking to or about pets? And then, why not just call it what it is?

This structure is generally used when explicitly contrasting with someone's not doing something.

E.g.:

When they don't do their homework their grades in the class suffer, but when they do do their homework they generally learn more and get more benefit from the class.

Nobody has said yet what exactly is wrong with redundancy. It seems useful to me. Sometimes its inflectional concord between words (which is a requirement of some languages and its absence would signal a grammatical error); sometimes it's for rhetorical effect (and we're all for that where and when appropriate); sometimes it's to avoid ambiguity (which seems a good thing, too); and sometimes it's something which annoys a select group of speakers (who usually seem wrong about other aspects of language, so I'd say it's something to do with them and not the language)..

What is wrong with it, besides lack of dignity, is that it escalates, driving the world closer to Fahrenheit 451 and 1984. Babblers so enamored of their own voices that they cannot be bothered to recall what acronyms mean perpetuate these things and even try to justify it with "all the other 'tards say it that way". One of the most intelligent characters in television was made to sound like a total dolt by saying "OCD disorder". And yes, at least one viewer noticed. It is time to declare Pleonasm Jihad!

You need to take a stress pill, man. I appreciate the humor, but it is almost AWOL. The thing is, language changes, and nobody can stop it. Nobody spells radar, laser, or scuba as acronyms any more. And English is no worse the wear for it. Good luck on your jihad; maybe you'll learn something new on the trip ...

What would holiday cheer be without Aramis the Intolerant’s Grinch counter to Fal the Coddler? Those de-volved acronyms (one really from RaDAR) are not so troublesome. But real acronyms mean what they mean, in any context. If SAM is not clear enough and additional wind is so gratifying, by all means one should utter “SURFACE-TO-AIR MISSILE”. Part of the tragedy is that some of those should never have been invented, particularly with a last letter denoting System, Program, Syndrome, Card, and most of all Number. The banking industry should have gone with PID.

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